Over the past decade, as people throughout the world have become more and more concerned about the condition of the environment, recycling has become a primary means by which individuals can make their own contribution to saving the planet. As landfills throughout the world are filled beyond their capacity, recycling ordinances have been passed in numerous municipalities, requiring and/or urging citizens to participate in a variety of mandatory and/or voluntary recycling programs.
In the State of Florida, for example, the legislature has set a goal of recycling 30 percent of the total waste stream by 1995. Under a program implemented in Florida, each county is legally responsible for the handling of solid waste issues, including recycling and the disposal of solid waste. Through July 1990, the State of Florida reported a recycling rate of about 15 percent. Among the types of waste which are subject to the recycling effort are aluminum cans, glass bottles, newspapers, and plastic bottles. The state of the state: recycling in Florida, RESOURCE RECYCLING, May 1991 at 32-39. In implementing their individual solid waste management programs, a number of Florida counties have developed their own materials recovery facilities (MRF). In developing its MRF, each county can "personalize" the categories into which waste may be divided. For instance, in Orange County, Florida, the MRF was developed such that one category of recyclable waste included glass bottles and jars, high density polyethylene (HDPE) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) beverage bottles, and metal cans, including food, beverage, and pet food cans made of steel, aluminum, or bi-metal. This type of a category of waste, which includes a variety of recyclables, is referred to in the industry as "commingled." Newspapers comprised a second category of waste in the Orange County MRF, and nonrecyclable trash comprised a third category. How to build a materials recovery facility that works, RESOURCE RECYCLING, May 1991 at 40-46.
Among those who have begun recycling waste are residents of high-rise buildings, both resiential and commercial, which utilize conventional waste disposal systems including at least one substantially vertical chute, access to which is through doors located on a plurality of floors of such buildings. Traditionally, in the period before recycling, residents of such buildings would dispose of their waste by opening an access door and depositing the waste down the chute. A large waste container, located in a central waste collection room, would be positioned so as to receive the waste that residents deposited down the chute. Examples of such systems are generally illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 2,177,328, to Pender; U.S. Pat. No. 3,713,581, to Mullens; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,640,403, to McDermott, all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
An attempt to introduce recycling capabilities to multi-story buildings employing waste disposal systems including a conventional chute is generally described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,031,829, to Shantzis. Shantzis generally describes a system which uses a single chute in multi-story buildings to collect into separate large receptacles different categories of wastes already separated by tenants for recycling. To dispose of waste, a tenant carries a container of separated waste to the access door on his floor. While the system described in Shantzis is not in use (i.e., no tenant is disposing of his waste), the access doors on every floor of the building remain locked. To "activate" the system, the tenant pushes a pushbutton to select the type of waste he wishes to dispose. In response to the tenant's pushing of a particular pushbutton, a movable platform, which may be a turntable, rotates to position the appropriate receptacle beneath the chute.
As part of the system described in Shantzis, after the appropriate receptacle is positioned beneath the chute, the access door which the tenant is using is unlocked, and the system generates a sonic indication to inform the tenant that he can dispose of his waste down the chute.
The system described in Shantzis, however, does not address all possible means by which to introduce and/or maintain recycling capabilities in multi-story buildings employing the conventional waste chute systems. For instance, one major disadvantage of the system described in Shantzis is the limitation of the system to one user at a time. This problem is illustrated by the fact that during the time that the tenant is using the waste disposal system described in Shantzis, the access doors on the remaining floors of the multi-story building are locked such that no other tenants can access the system at the same time as the tenant currently using the system.
A second disadvantage of the system described in Shantzis is that each tenant, prior to disposing of his waste, must select, by depressing a particular pushbutton on a control panel, the type of waste to be deposited down the chute. With each resident selecting a type of waste each time he uses the system, and with the system therefore rotating waste containers into position with each new selection, there is a substantial amount of wear-and-tear on the turntable mechanism described in Shantzis. For instance, with potentially hundreds of tenants in a multi-story building making a plurality of selections each week, thousands of repositionings can occur in any given week. Such wear-and-tear results in higher maintenance and labor costs, as service to the unit necessarily occurs more frequently than in a system with infrequent repositionings.
A further disadvantages of the system described in Shantzis results from the door lock system. As stated above, during the time that the tenant is using the waste disposal system described in Shantzis, the access doors on the remaining floors of the mult-story building are locked such that no other tenants can access the system at the same time as the tenant currently using the system. If a situation were to arise where one of the access doors could not be locked, all the remaining doors would remain locked and the entire system, with the exception of the one door "stuck" in the unlocked position, would be inaccessible.
One possible solution to these problems is to provide a system wherein a plurality of users may simultaneously dispose of particular categories of waste according to a predetermined, centrally programmed schedule that minimizes movement, and therefore service and maintenance costs resulting from wear-and-tear thereto, of container-positioning mechanisms. Incorporated into such a system is the ability to configure the categories of waste according to the specifications of a particular community's recycling program.
Thus, there has been a need in the art for a system that facilitates waste collection by enabling a plurality of users, in a multi-story residential or commercial building employing a system that includes at least one trash chute and access doors thereto on a plurality of floors, to simultaneously deposit separated waste according to a predetermined schedule, with one result of such a system being a reduction in the wear-and-tear on the mechanism used for positioning waste collection containers beneath the trash chute.